Is NVDA Underpriced at $177? The Path to $300 in 2026

Is NVDA Underpriced at $177?. In the fast-moving world of semiconductor investing, the date March 2, 2026, marks a fascinating crossroads for NVIDIA (NVDA).

ollowing its record-shattering Fourth Quarter and Fiscal Year 2026 earnings report on February 25, the stock has settled into a consolidation phase around $177.

To the casual observer, this may look like the “AI hype” is cooling off. However, to Wall Street’s heavy hitters—including Cantor Fitzgerald, Bernstein, and Rosenblatt Securities—$177 isn’t a peak; it is a spring-loaded floor. With a “Street-high” price target of $300, analysts are signaling that Nvidia is currently underpriced by nearly 70%.

Here is an in-depth analysis of why the path to $300 in 2026 is fundamentally supported by more than just speculation.

Table of Contents

1. The Fiscal 2026 Reality: Record-Breaking is the New Normal

To understand the bull case, we must first look at the “hard numbers” Nvidia just delivered. For the fiscal year ended January 25, 2026, the company didn’t just beat expectations; it rewrote the history books.

By the Numbers

Total Annual Revenue: $215.9 billion, a staggering 65% increase year-over-year.
Data Center Dominance: Quarterly Data Center revenue hit $62.3 billion (up 75% YoY), accounting for roughly 91% of total sales.
Profitability: Non-GAAP gross margins remained elite at 75.2%, proving that Nvidia still holds immense pricing power despite growing competition from AMD’s MI455X.

Analysts argue that at $177, Nvidia is trading at a forward P/E ratio that is historically “cheap” when adjusted for its 60%+ growth rate. The current price reflects short-term profit-taking, but the fundamental engine is accelerating.

2. The $500 Billion Backlog: Visibility Into 2027

One of the most significant metrics revealed in early 2026 is Nvidia’s massive order backlog. CEO Jensen Huang recently confirmed that the company has a “line-of-sight” into over $500 billion in demand for its Blackwell and Rubin architectures through the end of the year.

Why This Matters for the $300 Target

Sold Out Status: Cantor Fitzgerald analyst C.J. Muse noted that Nvidia’s chip supply for 2026 is likely already sold out.
Pre-Paid Growth: This isn’t speculative demand. Hyperscalers (Microsoft, Meta, Google, Amazon) have already committed to massive capital expenditure (CapEx) budgets, which are expected to exceed $527 billion in 2026 alone.
Revenue Stability: This backlog provides a level of financial predictability that few other tech companies can match, effectively “de-risking” the stock for institutional investors.

3. The Rubin Revolution: Beyond Blackwell

While the world was busy catching up to the Blackwell architecture in 2025, Nvidia stunned the industry at CES 2026 by announcing that its next-generation Rubin platform had already entered full production.

Rubin vs. Blackwell: The Leap Forward

The Rubin architecture is specifically designed for the “Agentic AI” era, where AI models don’t just answer questions but execute complex workflows.

Performance: Rubin offers roughly 3.3 times the power of Blackwell Ultra.
Cost Efficiency: Jensen Huang stated that Rubin will slash the cost of generating AI tokens to one-tenth that of the previous platform.
Six-Chip Architecture: Rubin isn’t just a GPU; it’s an integrated system including the Vera CPU, NVLink 6, and Spectrum-6 Ethernet, making it a “one-stop shop” for AI supercomputing.

The shift from training models to inference (running them at scale) is where the real money lies in 2026, and Rubin is the engine designed to own that market.

4. New Growth Pillars: Sovereign AI and Robotics

In 2026, Nvidia’s customer base is no longer just Silicon Valley. A $300 valuation is increasingly supported by Sovereign AI and Physical AI.

Sovereign AI

Nations like Canada, Singapore, France, and the U.K. are now building national AI factories. These governments want domestic data sovereignty, leading to a new multi-billion-dollar revenue stream for Nvidia that is less sensitive to corporate budget cycles.

Physical AI & Autonomous Vehicles

At CES 2026, Nvidia introduced Alpamayo R1, an open reasoning model for autonomous driving. By moving into robotics and self-driving software-defined platforms, Nvidia is expanding its “Total Addressable Market” (TAM) into the trillions.

5. The “Inference Explosion” and Token Economics

A common bear argument is that “AI training” will eventually peak. However, 2026 has proven that the demand for inference is exponential. As AI “agents” begin to handle customer service, coding, and scientific research, they consume tokens at a rate 1,000x higher than simple chatbots. This “inference explosion” means data centers will need to be constantly upgraded with newer, more efficient chips like Rubin to keep operational costs down.

Conclusion: Why $177 is the Golden Entry Point

Wall Street’s verdict is that $177 represents an “oversold” condition following a natural post-earnings correction. With $58.5 billion remaining in share repurchase authorization, Nvidia itself is ready to support the stock.

The path to $300 is paved with:

Rubin architecture volume shipments starting in H2 2026.
Sovereign AI revenue becoming a double-digit percentage of total sales.
Agentic AI driving a permanent shift in data center demand.

For investors with a 12-to-18-month horizon, the current $177 price may well be remembered as the last great buying opportunity before Nvidia enters its next leg of the $3 trillion+ market cap journey.